The Blinding Knife

Chapter 41

Dazen Guile stared at the dead man in the wall of the green prison. He and the dead man were picking scabs from their knees. They’d been in the green hell for days, a week? Surely not two weeks yet. They’d been quietly falling unconscious for unknown periods, quietly licking water off the wall, quietly starving. Maybe two weeks, from the scabs.

At some point before falling unconscious, he’d drafted tiny slivers of green. Whatever else it was, luxin was clean. Dazen had pushed luxin out-not out of his palms or under his fingernails, but out of his cuts. First he’d done the cuts on his hands and knees, then finally the inflamed, infected cut on his chest. The pain had been horrific. Yellow pus had preceded the luxin. When he woke, he’d licked the wall for moisture for an hour, then did it again, and passed out again. After a third time, only plasma and blood leaked from the wound.

Eventually, the fever had passed, leaving him passionless, empty, but finally aware again. Somewhat himself. A weaker self.

Like the blue prison, this green one was shaped like a squashed ball, a narrow chute above, a trickle of water down one wall, and a narrow drain below for the water and his waste.

His jailer-his brother-apparently hadn’t yet figured out that Dazen had broken out of the blue prison. There must surely be some advantage to that fact, but Dazen couldn’t figure out what it was. All he knew was that since he’d come to this prison, there had been no bread. He hated that thick, lumpy, coarse, dense bread-but now he would have begged, would have licked broken glass for it.

Perhaps his brother did know. Perhaps this was punishment.

Nonetheless, Gavin hadn’t had the guts to starve him to death before, and he’d had sixteen years to do that, so Dazen didn’t think Gavin would starve him now. At least not on purpose.

He felt weak, and that weakness was temptation. He hadn’t drafted green since the fever passed, and green was strength, wildness.

Green had doubtless saved him, but it was death now. Because it was strength, and strength would be addictive here. Every time he drafted a tiny sip, he would want to draft more. And green was irrationality, wildness. Wildness in a cage meant insanity, suicide.

I’m close enough to that as is.

He started building the towers of suppositions again. That was the beauty of years spent drafting blue. It ordered your thoughts, smothered passion.

Blue still hated the illogic of how he thought of his brother as Gavin and himself as Dazen, but he’d held firm to that decision. Gavin was a loser. Gavin had lost the war, Gavin had let himself be imprisoned. Dazen had stolen Gavin’s identity, so let him have it. “Gavin” was the dead man in the wall now, he the prisoner, he was Dazen now. He was a new man, and as Dazen, he would escape and he would win back all that should be his.

It was a touch of black madness, he knew. But perhaps a bit of madness is the only way to stay sane alone in a dungeon for sixteen years.

Recenter, Dazen. Dazed. Dozed. Dozen. Doozie. Double. Doubt. Certainty. T’s. Bifurcations. Intersections. Directions. Direct. Deceased. Dead. Dozing. Dazed. Dazen.

He expelled a long, slow breath. Glared at the dead man, who glared back, defiant.

“I’d tell you to go to hell, but-” he told the dead man.

“I’ve heard that one before,” the dead man replied. “Remember?”

Dazen grumbled into his beard. He held out his right hand. Either Gavin knows I’m in the next prison, or he doesn’t.

No, back up.

Either Gavin had put into place a system that would tell him when I moved from one prison to another, or he hadn’t.

If he’d gone to the trouble of making more than one prison, he’d have put a system into place to know when I went from one to the other.

Either his alarm worked, or it didn’t work.

I’m betting it worked. Nothing Gavin has done has failed so far.

So if the alarm worked, it showed that I’ve come here.

If it showed I’ve come here, either Gavin hasn’t seen the notice or he has.

But I’ve already established that he doesn’t have the guts to starve me.

So maybe he hasn’t seen that I’m here.

Which leaves another question: what does Gavin do when he travels? Either he never travels, or he’s set up a system to get me fed when he does. There’s no way he’d let himself be chained as much as I am, so he’s set up a system.

Either he leaves someone else in charge of feeding me, or he has an automated system. Automated systems can easily break, and Gavin wouldn’t want to kill me accidentally. But people can’t be trusted.

Tough choice.

Meh, Gavin believed in people. It was always one of his weaknesses. It was why Gavin had been able to foil his plan to escape with Karris.

That “Gavin” stuck in his blue brain irritated him. Made it hard to think about the time before the prison. Regardless, his brother’s trust was why his brother’s elopement with Karris had failed. Either the new Gavin had learned not to trust people from that failure or he hadn’t. Hmm. Gavin had been successful in taking Gavin’s place as Prism, which he couldn’t possibly do on his own. So Gavin hadn’t learned not to trust. So Gavin did trust someone.

So there was someone up there, who had either seen or not seen the warning that Dazen had moved from one prison to another. Either that someone was punctilious in fulfilling their duties or not. Gavin wouldn’t have trusted someone who wasn’t careful. So that someone was careful. Either that someone knew what the warning meant, and what he was supposed to do when he saw it, or he didn’t.

Or… back up. Either that someone was a woman or a man. Not that it mattered, but somehow the thought of some woman running around panicking because there was a blinking green luxin light and she didn’t know what to do about it pleased the prisoner immensely. He hoped she was a proud woman. How he missed humbling proud women.

Tangent, Dazen. And a tangent that stirred his lust. He couldn’t afford lust, not here, not now. He had once loved to draft green while bedding a woman, loved the wildness, the intensity. But starvation and blue had blunted his carnal desires, and green was madness. And madness was death. So…

Gavin wouldn’t have instructed for his brother to be starved to death, so eventually the woman up there would either do the right thing or the wrong. Or many wrong things in a row, looking for the right thing.

To do the right thing, she would have to either put bread in a different chute or manipulate the original chute so that it aimed toward Dazen’s new cell. First, of course, she’d have to dye the bread green.

But would she know to dye it green?

She would only know to dye it green if Gavin had told her to do so. Maybe she was new. Maybe Gavin had kept her in the dark, not wanting to give away any details about the prison below, not wanting to stoke the woman’s curiosity any more than necessary.

That was it. That was why it had been a week without food.

Gavin hadn’t left her adequate instructions. She would know that there was food going down to someone. She would get desperate.

Either Gavin would come back before she did something wrong, or he wouldn’t.

For the first time in perhaps years, a smile lit Dazen’s features. All he had to do was wait. He would either wait until he died or he would wait until she made a mistake that led to his freedom.

Waiting was hell, but it was a hell he was comfortable in. He talked with the dead man to pass the hours. The dead man mocked him, and he mocked the dead man. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was diverting. He could hardly wait until he broke out and left the dead man down here to die.

Days passed. Any of his suppositions could be wrong. Gavin might have trusted a woman to watch the prison who had reason to hate Dazen. She might be willfully murdering him, even though she knew exactly what to do. You never knew with women. Or there could be an alarm, but it had broken. How often would his brother check such things, anyway? Maybe after sixteen years he’d gotten careless. Maybe he inspected it every year, but the year had only recently expired, and he hadn’t come yet. Despair set in. He had to try something.

Almost without willing it, he drafted green. It was warmth on a cold night. It was food to the starving. It was a shot of straight liquor that instead of warming his belly went from his eyes to every extremity, washing him clean of weakness and paralysis.

Not too much. Not too much! He cut off the flow before it overwhelmed. But already, looking at the walls made him terribly claustrophobic. His fingers twisted into claws and he found himself clawing at the green luxin wall.

Stop stop stop! He flung the excess luxin from his fingers. The strength, he knew, was only a veneer of strength. His body was horridly weak. He would pay for anything rash he did. And green was stupidly rash. He wanted to charge the far wall and break through it. If he gave in to that impulse, he’d knock himself unconscious, probably die.

What had he even drafted green for? He wasn’t going to punch a hole in the green luxin wall with green luxin. His brother wasn’t that stupid.

Orholam, his hunger! He shot a tendril of green luxin up the food chute, farther, farther. He pushed around a corner-this chute was shaped differently than the blue. Of course it was, it had to direct the bread, what, twenty, thirty paces farther away? He tried to hold his patience, but Orholam, there was food there. He needed it! There was freedom somewhere up there.

He pushed forward, slowly, but not nearly as slowly as the blue would counsel. He didn’t feel the superviolet until it snapped.

Something swung sharply shut across the green arm he’d pushed so far, snapped it, snapped his will with it. He lost consciousness.

The next day-if day it was-he heard the grinding of gears in the chute. He sat up, expectant. Was it his brother, come to gloat, or food to save him?

His assumptions had been wrong. Either his brother did want to kill him, or the alarm had failed, or… he couldn’t reconstruct the tower now. Not without fresh blue. He was stupid. He was an animal. He was wasted, thin. He was broken. If it wasn’t bread, he was going to draft green. So it would be suicide. So what? What was so good about living, anyway?

Something rattled down the chute.

He waited, waited.

A loaf of bread shot out of the chute, and he caught it. He caught it and almost didn’t believe. Though all the light in the cell was green, and blue lit only by green made for incredibly difficult drafting, in his hand was chromatic salvation. In a hell of green, the bread was blue. It was blue enough.